Posts Tagged ‘GI Bill Schools’

Yes, Binal, if you are still serving and meet the transfer qualifications, you can transfer as much as you want up to the limit of your unused Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits. To review the qualification, you have to had served for at least six years and agree to serve an additional four years, unless you are within four years of being retirement eligible. In that case, the additional time required is prorated down to a lesser amount.

As far as his school not being listed on Weam’s, yes his school can request to become a VA-approved school. They have to address these questions in their approval request letter to the VA.

Keep in mind it does quite awhile for a school to get approved and approval doesn’t mean the school will accept all GI Bills or that all of their programs will be covered. The school decides what parameters they want in the approval request letter. My point being that even if his school gets approved, his coursework program might not be included.

If he has contacts at the school, he may want to help them draft their letter so he is sure his course gets included and for the correct GI Bill – the Post 9/11 GI Bill.

I’m not sure John why you want to stay with the MGIB to get your AA degree. If you use your Montgomery GI Bill (MGIB) you would get a maximum of $1,426 per month for 36 months (assuming you had three years of qualifying service and had made your $1,200 MGIB contribution). Out of that amount, you would have to pay tuition, fees, books and other education-related expenses.

If you switch to the Post 9/11 GI Bill right away, for that same three years of service, the VA pays your tuition and eligible fees directly to your school for up to 36 months and you get a monthly housing stipend averaging $1,200 per month across the nation – alone almost as much as your MGIB payment – plus you get the book stipend calculated at $41.67 per credit with a yearly cap of $1,000 per year.

And it gets better – if you switch to the Post 9/11 GI Bill with all 36 months of your MGIB entitlement left, once you finish using up your Post 9/11 GI Bill entitlement, your get your $1,200 MGIB contribution back. It comes as part of your last housing stipend payment.

However, there is one advantage to staying with the MGIB. Once you use up your 36 months of entitlement, you could switch and get an additional 12 months of Post 9/11 GI bill entitlement, but since you indicated you are going for a BA, it doesn’t sound like you need the extra months. I would switch to the Post 9/11 GI Bill right away – but that’s just me.

It certainly will pay for a master’s degree Sam, provided your school is on the VA’s list of approved schools! As a matter-of-fact, the Post 9/11 GI Bill will cover programs all the way up through the doctorate level. What it will not pay for right now is the monthly housing allowance to those who are attending classes wholly online.

But, that will change starting in August. With the passage of the GI Bill 2.0, full-time online-only students can get up to $673.50 per month in a housing allowance. Less than full-time students will get a prorated lesser amount.

If you are eligible for 100% of the Post 9/11 GI Bill, the VA pays your tuition and eligible fees directly to your school. Right now, they will pay up to the in-state maximum, but starting in August, those in-state maximums are eliminated.

At the beginning of each semester, you also get a book stipend paid at the rate of $41.67 per credit with a maximum of $1,000 per academic year. After August, you would start getting the reduced housing allowance.

Of course the way around that, and to get the full housing allowance, would be to take at least one class per semester pertaining to your degree plan at a brick and mortar school.

You should be able to make this work Bill. The key is for your educational plan to show your final desired outcome is to get a BS in game programming. That would make it easier to justify taking the classes at two different schools.

How the Post 9/11 GI Bill works when you are going to two schools is one school is designated as your “parent” school with the other one as your “secondary”. You sit down with a counselor at your parent school and together decide which classes you need to take at the secondary school. The primary school sends a letter to your secondary school informing them of the classes you will take. Once you have completed the secondary school classes, your primary school is notified and the credits from the secondary school are transferred to your primary school transcript.

Thinking this through, it makes sense to me to designate your school having the BS in game programming as your primary and your school having the AS in computer programming as your secondary before you start that last semester. Have your primary designate the final couple of classes you need to complete your AS. Once those two classes are done and your AS credits applied to your game programming BS degree plan, then you should be set to finish your degree at your primary school.

Because this can get kind of tricky, work with your VA Certifying Official at your primary school first. They are trained in how to do this and can be a valuable resource for you to use.